What looked like a positive downward trend in school zone speeding following the introduction of video speed enforcement in Saskatoon, Regina and Moose Jaw reversed itself in March.
During the pilot phase of the program in December, January and February school zone speeding declined dramatically. In Regina, it went from 6.4 per cent of drivers in December to 2.6 per cent in January and 0.67 per cent in February.
Saskatoon was equally significant at 4.64 to 0.90 to 0.37 per cent for the three months respectively.
Moose Jaw drivers appear to be most respectful of school zones starting out at 0.97 per cent of drivers in December to 0.62 and 0.38 in January and February.
The rebound in March was almost as dramatic as the decline in previous months.
School zone speeding doubled in Moose Jaw from 0.38 per cent to 0.64 per cent, tripled in Regina from 0.67 to 1.69 and quintupled in Saskatoon from 0.34 to 1.5.
Kelly Brinkworth, SGI’s manager of media relations suggested the increase may be weather related.
“We do find as the weather starts getting warmer and road conditions become less of a concern, we tend to see speeds spike a bit,” she said, warning that it is really difficult to pin point a single cause and that it may just be temporary blip in the long-term trend.
Also, she noted that the overall percentages of drivers speeding in school zones are pretty low, which is encouraging.
Still, any amount of speeding in school zones concerns the provincial insurer. A U.K. study indicated in an actual collision between a motor vehicle and a pedestrian the odds of death go up exponentially with speed from five per cent at 20 kilometres per hour to 85 per cent at 40 kilometres per hour.
Of course, at lower speeds drivers have a greater ability to avoid the collision in the first place.
Brinkworth said the numbers have SGI looking at its options.
“Obviously it speaks to the fact we need to raise more awareness of speeding in school zones,” she said.
They are looking at possible more signage and possibly setting up electronic speed indicators before the beginning of the school zone.
The other part of the program involves video ticketing on highways at Hwy 1 and 9th Avenue in Moose Jaw, the Ring Road in Regina, Hwy 1 near Pilot Butte, Circle Drive in Saskatoon and Hwy 12 near Martensville.
After an initial significant drop off in speeding at all these locations from December to January as people started receiving warnings, the percentage of drivers violating the limit has pretty much leveled off for the past three months settling in around 0.5 to one per cent except at Moose Jaw. At that location it has remained around four per cent for the last three months after dropping to four from six per cent from December to January.
March marked the first month that people were ticketed for the offences. In Regina school zones, 1,029 tickets were issued compared to just 307 in Saskatoon and 86 in Moose Jaw.
A total of 1,656 citations were issued at the highway locations.
